This mixtape is probably a concept album about falling for a stripper in Atlanta and realizing that chasing her isn’t worth it. I’ll be honest, the music is so dope that the concept escapes me. DJ Burn One has taken his incorporation of live instrumentation to new levels on Dick Brown’s Tall Tails of Foxy Cottontail with live bass, drums and guitar (played by Ricky). Every track pops and crackles with these elements no longer confined to predictable loops but luscious living parts of music that moves.

If you want to read about the genius of DJ Burn One you can search this site. We’ve written pretty extensively on how valuable this dude is and he’s still (along with Alchemist) the best at utilizing guitar in his beats. The story this time is not the genius of Burn One or the tragic stripper love story. It’s not even the unstoppable likability of Ricky who ends the first track by getting rejected access to the strip club while he tries to prove he’s famous and later on undertips the bathroom attendant.

The real flabbergasting thing about Dick Brown’s Tall Tails of Foxy Cottontail is the unblemished absurdity that runs through it; the howling of the wolves on Wild Chile (amazing chorus), my favorite Merlin reference of 2013 “I pulled the sword out the stone met a wizard named Merlin and with one box of Trojans I devoured three virgins, (Castles in The Sky)” and an oddly romantic song called Mermaid Serenade.

Go! Ricky! Go! Used to go by Ricky Fontaine and be part of a group called Indeed! They produced an excellent sounding mixtape that for some reason I dismissed as lyrically silly. It took Foxy Cottontail to make me understand. Every song is still very connected to real life experience just pulled through a powerful imagination. Most of the time it just flat out rocks. In a hip hop market that sometimes lacks forward momentum songs like Gypsy Lady with deep riffs and sing a long sensibility are irresistible. As everyone tries to dial their music down and make it more spooky and haunting, hip hop fans are going to need music that keeps us awake and brings the heavy head nod back.

This mixtape just came out so I’m not pretending I completely understand it yet. I might never want too. I might just tap my feet to the drums in Crème Brulee and let the music wash over me like 80’s Prince or through repeated listening I might catch gems I never did before. Either way, it will always be listenable (for my whole family) and a daring multi-colored light show of sound and emotion amidst the abject darkness that is all too present. Knowing that Ricky played the guitar on these tracks and did the chorus’s does show these songs in a different light. I think Dick Brown’s Tall Tails of Foxy Cottontail brands Go! Ricky! Go! As possessing a very unique kind of music, different even from his Burn One contemporaries (like Scotty) and should make every hip hop fan thankful. We need our weird dreamy music, the stuff that doesn’t fit. That’s the kind of music that expands your perspective. Next time anyone says Southern rap is dumb or simplistic put on Tomahawk and when they ask who this is just yell GO! RICKY! GO!